What's Next for the New York Knicks After 2024 NBA Playoffs Exit?

It may not have ended how they wanted or even came to expect, but the New York Knicks' 2023-24 campaign will go down as a rollicking success—a gritty-as-hell run that saw them progress functionally and culturally, all while navigating injury issues potentially beyond compare.

Everyone involved deserves a moment or three to bask in the afterglow once the sting wears off from New York's Game 7 loss to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals. But if we've learned anything about this core, it has little time or patience for moral victories and linear progress and "Atta boys!"

This is a group that needs the offseason but will loathe entering it on anything less than its own terms—all (totally understandable) "Well, only one squad wins it all" caveats be damned.

Fittingly enough, the Knicks front office, led by president Leon Rose, thinks and operates in the same vein. It has meticulously assembled, preserved and rolled over an asset base ready-made for the Next Thing(s).

Shuffling the deck in advance of the trade deadline, twice, does not change this approach. Indeed, New York as it sits may be the answer to the question of "Who's the second-best team in the East at full strength?" But there is still work to be done—decisions to make, swings to take, futures to figure out.

And while taking time to reflect upon and appreciate what the Knicks just did is essential, puzzling out the next steps—both big and small—begins now.

Note: "Get healthy" will not be counted as a next step, because it goes without saying.

Jalen Brunson just wrapped up one of the objectively best seasons in Knicks franchise history, a riveting revelation that earned him a top-five finish on the MVP ballot. Of course you offer him an extension.

Whether he signs it is a different story.

New York can give Brunson a four-year, $156.5 million deal that, including next season, would have him on the books through 2028-29. If he waits until next summer to decline his player option, though, he'll be eligible to sign a four-year max worth around $208.5 million or a five-year max that checks in at roughly $269.9 million. (These numbers will increase to 35-percent-of-the-cap maxes if he makes another All-NBA team in 2024-25.)

Waiting seems like the smart play for Brunson. Next year will be his age-28 season. The Knicks and other teams won't shy away from shelling out four-year windfalls totaling more than he can get now, even if he ultimately doesn't get the full boat.

Locking up Brunson this summer is better for New York. It strips away any potential ambiguity surrounding his future, and his extended number would remain team-friendly as the rest of the roster gets more expensive.

Maybe his sentimental attachment to the team and city that oversaw his ascent to superstardom convinces him to take the extension. Or perhaps the right foot and left hand injuries he just suffered resonate in a "things can go sideways real fast, so give me the long-term security" type of way.

Regardless of what Brunson does, the Knicks have zero decisions here. You offer him an extension before charting out the rest of your offseason—and the bigger picture.

OG Anunoby's foray into unrestricted free agency is mostly painted as a non-issue.

The Knicks gave up two core players in RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley to get him. They're not in a position to haggle over dollars and cents. You don't make that trade unless you're prepared to dole out whatever it takes to retain him, including max money.

And it might take max money.

Other teams can offer Anunoby a four-year deal worth up to $181.9 million. Multiple front offices will have the scratch and incentives to put that contract on the table, even if they're only trying to inflate New York's payroll. (The Detroit Pistons, Philadelphia 76ers and Oklahoma City Thunder, specifically, loom large here.)

The Knicks needn't fret about outbidding anyone. They can go up to four years and $189.5 million or five years and $245.3 million. And given that other suitors could have easily beaten New York's initial package to land him, even with Toronto clearly prioritizing players in return, the idea that Anunoby wants to be in the Big Apple carries a ton of weight.

This is all to say: OG does not profile as a flight risk unless the Knicks inexplicably start pinching pennies. But it'll be interesting to see where his annual number falls, particularly after a left hamstring injury should have ended his playoffs and especially when he tried to gut out the issue in Game 7 against Indiana.

Does the threat of outside admirers leave New York to max out Anunoby over four years from the jump? Will the Knicks include a fifth-year carrot so that he's on a sub-max that lowers his annual number? Is there a chance he gets the full boat over five years? Will the Supertax Era deflate the price point of non-superstars so much that we're all surprised by how much he doesn't get?

Anunoby, in all likelihood, isn't going anywhere. But the terms under which he stays will inform how the Knicks operate both this summer and beyond.

Early Bird rights allow the Knicks to offer Isaiah Hartenstein a contract that tops out at four years and $72.5 million. This should be enough to keep him in orange and blue.

To be honest, it might not even take that much.

He is a terrific passer, a quality screen-setter, deft at push shots and a smart defender who's mobile enough on his heels to cover both ends of pick-and-rolls. At only 26, he should pique the attention of any team looking to boost its center rotation.

But the market for non-star bigs is perpetually weird. That makes it difficult to spot a suitor who will come in appreciably over the top of mid-level-exception money. And even if a team like the Thunder enters the fold, there's no guarantee it dangles enough aggregate money to materially outstrip New York's best offer.

Granted, anything can happen until Hartenstein signs on the dotted line. And even if he is a lock to return, the cost of his next deal matters.

Mitchell Robinson's declining salary scale helps streamline the Knicks' decision-making process. Investing a combined $30 million or so per year in your top-two center does not break the bank. But giving Hartenstein $16.2 million to start while maxing out Anunoby ($42.3 million) puts New York on the precipice of the second apron if they also guarantee Bojan Bogdanović's salary.

That might not faze the Knicks. Or they could waive Bogdanović ($2 million guaranteed). But his expiring-salary slot cost them Quentin Grimes and is supposed to, at the very least, serve as matching money in a trade. Just wiping him from the ledger would be a medium-sized bummer.

Perhaps Anunoby and Hartenstein don't command enough to complicate cap-sheet logistics, but they could. And that adds a layer of importance to their free agencies that goes beyond their (likely) returns.

Head coach Tom Thibodeau has overseen an invaluable cultural shift within the walls of Madison Square Garden. He is going to get an extension for it.

Not surprisingly, the Knicks want to keep him and will begin negotiating with him sometime this summer, according to Katz. This should be a largely painless process.

Monty Williams' six-year, $78 million contract with the Detroit Pistons last offseason upended the head coaching market. Annual salaries and contract lengths are on the rise if you have the leverage. And Thibodeau has plenty of his own leverage after leading what became a skeleton cast within one win of the Eastern Conference Finals.

At the risk of being reductive, this is almost immaterial for the Knicks. You can say a lot of trolly (and accurate) things about the way they've conducted themselves in the past. Even at their nadir, though, they have seldom looked to scrimp and save like the Los Angeles Lakers a pseudo small-market team. New York and Thibodeau will find common ground.

Any potential drama lies in a more macro question: Is he the right coach to shepherd the Knicks through the next phase of their development—the harder-to-make leap from darling fringe contender to genuine, sustainable title threat?

It's a more complicated issue than advertised. Thibodeau has shown real growth over the past year-plus. From Isaiah Hartenstein ever so slightly pulling him from his this-is-how-centers-must-play shell and indulging higher three-point volume to rolling out undersized 4s and three-guard lineups, the 66-year-old no longer seems irretrievably stubborn. If he's at a tactical deficit compared to many of his peers, he's at least more open to trying stuff.

And yet, many have portrayed his minutes management as a stroke of genius. Overuse? Hell no! He's conditioning his players to do their job as hard as possible for as hard as possible.

There are moments in which this logic feels undeniable. The Knicks won a handful of stressful, closely contested games during their playoff push by outhustling (and outexecuting) opponents down the stretch.

And look, there might be something to this in the short term—in any given season. But if you're going to give this stance credence, you must also consider the inverse: that Thibodeau's all-out approach to every game takes a physical toll which extracts a long-term cost.

Both extremes are as unfair as they are polarizing to consider. He didn't so much run players aground as he was out of options. Would playing Alec Burks more have spared OG Anunoby from his hamstring injury? Did multiple years of shouldering a Thibs-sized workload somehow mess up Julius Randle's right shoulder? Did Josh Hart's, um, abs reach their breaking point because he played too much?

Ascribing blame to the coach, both now and later, requires more proof. And it doesn't quite jibe with reality. Mitchell Robinson has never played a ton. Wondering whether he returned too soon from his left ankle injury is fair. Attributing it to his workload is the mother of all stretches. (Bojan Bogdanović also injured his wrist while arguably being underused.) And it's not like Thibodeau invented heavy workloads. Anunoby played under Nick Nurse for crying out loud.

So much of this is moot. Thibs isn't going anywhere, and drawing any correlation between this season and longer-term risk requires at least another year. To that end, it'll certainly be worth tracking how guys like Hart, Jalen Brunson, Isaiah Hartenstein and Donte DiVincenzo hold up into and through next year.

For now, though, Thibodeau seems beloved by his players and just chaperoned the Knicks to the second-best record in the East and another postseason series victory despite mission-critical bodies dropping like flies.

New York must now decide how much that's worth—and whether his success can scale to any consequential changes they make moving forward.

We save the Knicks' most important next step for last: Bagging another star.

This is actually an easier ask than last year. Back then, you could (and should) have argued New York still needed a best-player upgrade. Jalen Brunson has since taken a stick of dynamite to that stance.

Skeptics will worry about building around a 6'2" guard. That's a concern best tabled for Brunson's post-prime. You don't finish inside the top five of MVP voting by accident. And his rise affords the Knicks a level of optionality they didn't have before. Their next star doesn't have to be better than him, or necessarily as good as him. They just need to be better than who's already in place.

That invariably leads us to an awkward Julius Randle discussion. You could argue the Knicks would be in the conference finals if his shot creation was at their disposal. You could also look at his tiny-but-terrible playoff sample and how New York fared during the regular season when it deployed Brunson alongside OG Anunoby, Donte DiVincenzo, Josh Hart and Isaiah Hartenstein and conclude that Randle is more valuable as matching salary in a trade and/or someone no longer guaranteed a spot in the closing lineup.

Whichever side of the fence you land on doesn't really matter. A healthy Randle may have propelled the Knicks further into playoffs, but to what end? New York wouldn't be favored to beat Boston or whichever team, Dallas or Minnesota, that comes out of the Western Conference.

Yes, this is an incredibly lofty bar. That's also the entire point. The Knicks must be judged against reaching the highest possible peak. They're unlikely to do that with Randle as their second-best player—or even just their second-most important shot creator. New York knows this. The front office will continue to prowl the trade market for stars this summer, according to The Athletic's Fred Katz.

Identifying the right player is less about the Knicks' own acumen and more about the landscape itself. They have the draft equity and matching salary to get a deal done. But they need a sensible co-star to shake loose.

Someone like Paul George (via opt-in-and-trade) or even Mikal Bridges would be ideal. Are they also gettable? If not them, then who? New York should (probably) steer clear of another small guard (i.e. Donovan Mitchell), and Tom Thibodeau may not be the best guy to optimize a star center. The list of possibilities opens up after that.

This search should unfold independent of Randle's future. Well, sort of. He is extension-eligible this summer (2025-26 player option). The Knicks can talk themselves into offering him a new deal if the money's right, but they're better off waiting in case his (should-be) expiring contract can be used in a trade. Do things get awkward, maybe untenable, if they try to or actually extend Brunson and not him?

The Knicks can't afford to care. Their mission is to preserve this year's spirit while improving the top-end talent. That doesn't have to come at the expense of Randle's future, but it might. DiVincenzo and Hart have long since graduated from matching-salary tools (and are super tight with Brunson). Unless the Knicks can use Mitchell Robinson and Bojan Bogdanović to match money, Randle's $30.8 million salary may be the primary vehicle through which they land the player better suited to elevate their championship equity.

And no, waiting to see what happens next season isn't a viable option. Star-hunting will only get harder as the Knicks get more expensive and future draft picks turn into actual players. New York deserves credit for biding its time and trade resources, and this isn't a call for the team to do anything at the cost of everything. But now is the time for these Knicks to operate with even more urgency than they've shown.

The clock on their window of opportunity is ticking, and more importantly, they're officially good enough to make the swing they've actively (and wisely) avoided over the past few summers.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.

Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac. Draft-pick obligations via RealGM.